Linux users to OS X users

I am newly converted Lintel (that's right Linux- Intel) person. I came to the Mac side because I can not stand the Intel crap. I need polished edges and sublime beauty (redundant I know), and Mac has it! But the finally straw was OS X. I love Linux and I will always use/run it (laptop running Linux from work). So when I switched and started using OS X I was blown away at it's true UNIX roots and thought to myself Apple has done what the some in the Linux community are trying to do, bring UNIX to the rest of the world. I started to think about how many Mac people out there have been draw to Mac by following the path Windows-to-Linux-to-OS X? So here is my question: How many out there (just give me a quick few sentences) have followed the above path to Mac/ OS X?

I think Jobs has something with OS X.

BTW, I just bought the Power Mac G4 800mhz. I only change one thing, took ram that came in it out and add (1gb)Crucial CL2 Ram, YEAH BABE!

I've often thought that the battle for the hearts and minds of computer users by Linux advocates will find limited success in the first world because everyone is so wealthy, that saving a few hundred bucks on an operating system seems like too much effort, at least on the desktop.

If Linux is ever going to gain big ground, it will start in places that are ascendent economies such as China, India, Pakistan and Africa. All the places that have a very high Windows piracy rate. At some point, there will be a national directive in these countries (as Korea has done) to create a linux foundation for government operations. From there, it won't be too far fetched to see an applications economy spring up.

I used x86 Linux full time as my desktop OS for nearly five years (Jan '97 - Dec. '01). Then I got a TiBook. I run OS X exclusively now. Both my TiBook and my PC have 550MHz processors and 256MB of PC100 RAM. My PC's relevant specs:

Now, first off, I really pride myself on being as objective as I can be. I'm not a Mac-head, or a Linux-head, or a Windows-head or whatever. I try to rate things as I see them and not let any biases get in my way. In that regard I'm probably the only one like that posting to this forum.

So... I'm not really sure what kind of responses you were looking for in your post, but here are some things I've observed:

General: My PC, running Linux and WindowMaker, seems to be a vastly superior multitasking OS. There have been times where I've run two heavy compiles at once, with 4 Mozilla windows, StarOffice, about a half dozen xterms, and my MP3s didn't skip at all. At the same time, the rest of the system was completely responsive, even while the disks were grinding away. Perhaps this isn't a completely fair comparison, but even if my PC's dual SCSI disks didn't completely blow away the TiBook's IDE disk, I'm certain the Linux box still would have been much better off than the TiBook under the same load.

Graphics: Well, the TiBook wins here. The RAMDAC is just as sharp on an external monitor as the Matrox's (which surprised me greatly), and 3D performance is better.

Perceived desktop speed: There is really not much faster than WindowMaker for a desktop environment. Aqua is a *LOT* slower, probably in part because it's doing a lot more, like alpha blending, drop shadowing, pretty animations etc. that WindowMaker doesn't do. Not really a surprise to anyone here, I don't think. However - WindowMaker offers in my opinion a more versatile UI. It's based on NextStep, and there are a lot of little contextual menu niceties like being able to right-click anywhere on a titlebar to open up a menu that lets you close/hide/minimize/shade/whatever, right-click on the desktop to open a menu to launch apps, middle-click on the desktop to quickly switch between windows, etc.

On the other hand, Aqua definitely looks better. Fonts in XFree86 are a complete joke. X11 has no support for transparency, and applications are generally ugly and inconsistent. No surprises here, either.

Printing in Linux is a complete joke. I was running CUPS, which actually makes me administer my desktop computer's print spooler from within a web browser. It only took about 24 total hours for me to get a working print subsystem.

Both machines are extremely stable. I've had 90 day uptimes with my PC before, only turning it off to change hardware. I just shut off my TiBook yesterday after an 11-day uptime, and I'm sure it could have gone much longer.

So, let's see, what else is there. I guess to summarize, my Linux PC is a lot more like a server. It handles heavy load much better, it uses less memory, it's much snappier, but at the same time, it's also got five fans and two 7200rpm drives spinning and annoying the hell out of me. The TiBook is obviously a lot sleeker physically, and OS X provides a much more cohesive, consistent, enjoyable, more hassle-free user experience for non-geeks. If you're a Linux user contemplating a switch to OS X, it can certainly be done, but you'll probably want to do some research first.

Let me just add that playing an MP3 on my Linux PC consumes 0.5% (yes, zero point five percent) of my CPU using xmms, while playing the same MP3 on my TiBook using iTunes consumes about 20% of what is supposed to be a superior CPU. I know that, all software being equal, the G4 is superior to the K6, but the heavy, heavy weight of OS X makes the K6 seem to me to be much faster. For further perspective, playing the same MP3 on my 150MHz R4400SC SGI Indigo2 running IRIX 6.2 consumes only 30% of the CPU - 10% more than iTunes on a chip that, SPEC-wise, I'd guess is about 5 times faster than the R4400.

Sorry this is so long. I'm sure I could go on and on, but... if anyone would like to know more, just ask.

Although I certainly don't have the expertise or resources to compare systems, I can plainly see OSX is *pokey*, manages multiple tasks poorly, and is quite crash-happy, actually. My mom bought a snow imac in dec and I installed X as the default: I was thrilled, yet frustrated...
My take on it is this: much work has yet to be done to OSX (no kidding ) Redundancy in the ways of doing simple things, interminable beachballing for no good reason, in fact the design of the system is 'confused' feeling (I didn't say confusing). The whole thing feels kind of crampy to me.The dock is appalling- auto-hide is goofy and inconsistent. Aqua is cartoony. Whatever may be said about cooperative multitasking, I've never had problems with MacOs 6,7,8,9 crashing (except in netscape 2.0, 3.0 days). What does OSx have to do with the original mac concept? Not much. I wonder how much research/science went into OSX design- it all seems somewhat arbitrary.

I guess I need to get my own Ti Book with OSX and get used to it a little more. It does have a lot of wonderful features, and the hardware is so beautiful~ it will be *very* interesting to see what apple does with all it now has...!

(note: I don't mean to sound like a troll or humbug all the time, I just feel that our best shot at getting a decent computer comes from apple and I hope they get it all worked out)

In my experience, OS X handles multitasking VERY well. I believe the unresponsiveness alex_ant experienced was more based on the GUI's need for more resources than were available. For example I've had iTunes running through mp3s, a couple of big compiles running, was editing a file in Apple works, and had a bunch of other stuff running. OS X handled this very well. The only problem was that the windowing system was a little slower than usual. But open up process viewer and check out the system usage of WindowManager. It'll take every little bit of processing power it can.

Now I don't want to beat a dead horse here, but I think OS X is a terrific operating system. The only part of the OS that I've seen people have legitimate gripes about is the UI. It is what causes OS X's apparant slowness. It is what is different than OS 9 and previous. This is the piece that is causing the most amount of contention. Personally, I'll keep Quartz and Aqua. They are slow, but they sacrifice some (in my opinion) small amount of speed for some terrific abilities; these abilities are far superior to any graphics engine out there.

BTW- On my system playing an mp3 in iTunes with iTunes hidden consumes an average of a bit less than 10% of the CPU. Now if I turn my EQ on and start playing an mp3 it hovers around 20%. I consider 10% resonable, though I'd like to see it down. 20% with EQ on worries me a bit--I didn't thnk an EQ was that expensive. This experiment was run with a 400 MHz TiBook with 384 MB RAM. But I guess I'd have to believe that OS X is at fault here. iTunes seems to be a pretty hoggy app. I'm going to try to find one of those linux command line mp3 players and get it for OS X.

You just pegged me. Admittedly, I was never good with linux, but I saw it as an alternative to the world of gates. I wanted more control over my operating system than billy gave me, and I wanted to learn more about computers at the same time. I got frustrated with the lack of documentation with linux (at least in one localized spot....). I was looking for a new comp (an apple never crossed my mind) when my pal suggested an apple. Out of respect for my friend I sat through his feverish pitch on how cool OS X would be when it came out in a couple months (this was Nov-Dec 2000). I bought my powermac 466in Jan 2001 largely due to the pending release of OS X. ANd i was in line at midnight at a local mac-esque shop to get a copy when it was first available.

To date I have still not harnessed the Unix side as well as I might have, but the stability is great.

Originally posted by graydecember ...I can plainly see OSX is *pokey*, manages multiple tasks poorly, and is quite crash-happy, actually. My mom bought a snow imac in dec and I installed X as the default: I was thrilled, yet frustrated...

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I understand your frustration with the Beach-balling as I call it.. But I also understand that Apple is further optimising the OS to try to eliminate that for the 10.2 Jaguar release! Here's hoping. As for multitasking, it does quite well, MUCH better than OS 9 --IF-- your system has adequate memory. A couple tips here... no less than 192MB RAM for OSX for good performance, and don't use Classic mode unless you have to.. remember for force quit Classic when you are done using it. It seems to waste memory and processor time even when it's idle. I've never experienced 10 being crash happy.. quite the opposite.. 9 always locked up on me. 10 fixed lock-ups for good. At worst, all I ever deal with is a certain application bailing, but everything else goes merrily on (thank goodness). It seems I never have to reboot except for system updates or software installs.. A suggestion if you are having trouble with crashing.. probably you have a bad memory DIMM.. A friend of mine was complaining about crashing problems under X (but he had only used his iMac under 10 after I sold it to him).. We tracked it down to being a bad or incompatible DIMM.. after removing it and plugging in a replacement 512 MB... all the problems went away and everything ran pretty smooth from there out.

I've just done some more MP3 testing. mpg123 (command line player) uses about 9% of the CPU on my TiBook 550. Audion is using from 23-30%. With title scrolling on it goes up to 40%.

I consider even 9% to be terrible. If iTunes is known to be one of the less efficient MP3 players for OS X, I'd really like to know what the efficient ones are. Also, it seems strange to me that for all the hype Apple gives AltiVec, iTunes doesn't even use the AltiVec unit for playback. (Or else it does but it uses it so inefficiently that it has no effect.) It's a bit frustrating to know that I've got some mad-fast vector processor under the hood but am completely unable to put it to use since I never use Photoshop or Final Cut Pro.

I wonder if one of the reasons contributing to OS X's poor performance is a poor compiler. I'm not a programmer, and I know different parts of the OS are probably written in different languages, but this would explain a lot. GCC is a good compiler, but it's hardly known for its killer optimization - especially on PPC. If apps like iTunes, Audion, mpg123, etc. are compiled using the modified GCC Apple ships in the developer kit, this would explain even more. IBM must offer an optimized PPC compiler, or at least an optimized POWER-series compiler. Maybe Apple ought to license it. Just a wild idea...

Does anyone else remember the day not so long when we could do all the common tasks we do today inside 12MB of RAM, and 32MB seemed like so much? And now 512MB is common, even sometimes recommended. Wow. Are there any programmers lurking around who would like to offer theories on why this is?

I like to stick to my idea that OSX, while needing lots of bugs removed and optimisation added, was designed with the future in mind in which case it will just seem to get better and better as machines get faster and faster. I find it rather beautiful on my 533 so if I was running, say, a G5, I would be laughing..... at the PC world (not that I don't already).

OS X is just fine. My new 800mhz G4 has been running great and I have not had any of the UI slowness that some of you have mention. Maybe it is because I replaced the RAM that came in it (256mb CL3(slow) PC133mhz). I put in it's stead a fresh slices of 1GB CL2(fast) PC133mhz Crucial RAM! Despite what people say CL2 always makes a difference some how somewhere.

Originally posted by ooartist OS X is just fine. My new 800mhz G4 has been running great and I have not had any of the UI slowness that some of you have mention. Maybe it is because I replaced the RAM that came in it (256mb CL3(slow) PC133mhz). I put in it's stead a fresh slice of 1GB CL2(fast) PC133mhz Crucial RAM! Despite what people say CL2 always makes a difference some how somewhere.

Originally my mac came with 128 mb, and I shelled outthe extra cash to get the CL2 256mb chip. I then upgraded another 512, but my only option was to get the CL3 and here I am now with everything at CL3.

Originally posted by alex_ant I've just done some more MP3 testing. mpg123 (command line player) uses about 9% of the CPU on my TiBook 550. Audion is using from 23-30%. With title scrolling on it goes up to 40%.

Click to expand...

How did you get mpg123 for OS X? I can't get fink to install unstable packages!

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